First, you should know that ``Braveheart'' is the wrong name for this movie. It should be called ``Pureheart.'' Because this huge, glossy, gory yet surprisingly controlled epic is held together by this notion: that a belief can be more important than anything, including one's own life.

You should also know that Pat Buchanan claims this as his favorite movie, and when he talks about knights and barons and castles -- and maybe more -- this is probably where he gets it from.

Mel Gibson, the Oscar-nominated director and guiding intelligence of this film (it has 10 Academy Award nominations overall), stars as William Wallace, a Scottish hero of the early 14th century. As the story begins, Scotland is a dirty, scrabbly, half- wild captive nation under the manicured thumb of England, personified by King Edward I (the glowering Patrick McGoohan).

After his beloved wife dies at the knife of a magistrate, patriot Wallace becomes single- minded on Scottish independence to the point of near madness, refusing to waver on the battlefield or at the conference table, even when weaker Scots seem ready to deal. And so this opus progresses, alternating allegiance and betrayal, drubbing and debacle, diplomacy and boiling oil, up to its attenuated, excruciating end.

Despite a rather clumsy start, Gibson does an astonishing job of managing all kinds of things all at once: the complicated politics of the era, in which even such heroes as Robert the Bruce switch sides a couple of times; the ambient misery of a daily life where warmth and cleanliness are concepts harder to grasp than honor and valor; the weird presiding personality of Wallace, who is part Henry V, part Washington, part Mad Max; and the rousing, bloody battles scenes, which are among the finest and clearest ever filmed. (Discount the extremely silly subplot involving an affair between Wallace and the French-born Princess of Wales.)

A three-hour movie held together by an idea is a wonderful thing. Passionate intensity and using an ideal as a fixed star are wonderful things. But two days after you see ``Braveheart,'' promise you'll spend a few minutes thinking about the role of compromise in human endeavor.

Some movies simply don't take off until they come out on video. Thrillers like ``Dead Calm'' or ``F/X'' -- or this movie, which is as good or better than either one.

``Mute Witness'' is a superior suspense thriller that never really had a chance at the box office. A brief stop in the Hartford area last year attracted little attention. But word- of-mouth could make this small, independent film a popular takeout item at the local video store.

Aside from one cameo, the movie's stars and filmmakers are unfamiliar to American audiences, which may have hurt it the first time around. But in many important and flattering ways, the movie is very familiar. It borrows with abandon from good suspense thrillers that came before it. It has the paranoia of any number of Hitchcock films (whom do you trust?), the shenanigans of the aforementioned ``F/X'' (are we really seeing what we think we're seeing?), and a plot device from such classics as ``Dial M for Murder'' and ``Wait Until Dark'' (woman, with a disability, in distress).

The heroine here cannot speak. She is Billy Hughes, a special-effects artist from America working on a low-budget film in Moscow with her sister and brother-in-law. The unfamiliar setting and Russian language lend a sense of discomfort to the proceedings, and the feeling intensifies greatly as Billy stumbles onto a murder most unkind.

Watching in horror, she unleashes one of the silent screams that punctuate the film. The silence can be a blessing, as she initially avoids notice and runs. But when she knocks over furniture and sends items clattering to the floor, the chase is on. The first sequence through the huge film studio building is exceptional. The chase does end, eventually. But not for long.

First-time director Anthony Waller keeps the viewer wonderfully off-kilter and slightly confused -- right to the end. Like other movies of its ilk, ``Mute Witness'' is never over until it's over.